Sunday, August 10, 2014

Bar-tailed Godwit at Oso Bay, 8/10/14

Yesterday, while we were still enjoying the Collared Plover at Hargill, that darn rarity finder Mel Cooksey found the first state record of Bar-tailed Godwit up in Oso Bay in Corpus Christi.  It was just a few yards from where he found a Curlew Sandpiper a few years ago.  So I woke up early this morning and called Mary Gustafson to come along with me to look for it.  After the three hour drive, we pulled into the Texas A&M Corpus Christi campus and walked down to the mudflats only to find Martin Reid and others looking at the bird.  Over the next two hours we enjoyed great scope views of the birds.  This is a molting male of the European nominate subspecies of Bar-tailed Godwit, lapponica, as indicated by the white rump and underwings.



These fuzzy photos were digiscoped as the birds were a bit too distant for my regular 300 mm lens.  I definitely need to work on my digiscoping skills.  There were hundreds of other shorebirds to look at, but we headed for home anyway.  Hope someone finds something else rare up there.  I'll make the trip again.


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